Robert Colvile is a writer and senior comment editor at the Telegraph, who cares more about politics and policy than is probably healthy - for his newest pieces, please see here. He tweets as @rcolvile.

Child benefit: the murmurs of disquiet grow

The official theme for today at the Conservative Party Conference is "Tackling the causes of poverty", with big speeches from the likes of Ken Clarke, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith. But the agenda will be dominated by George Osborne's plan to scrap child benefit for the middle classes.

In the bars of Birmingham yesterday, there was general agreement that this was the right thing to do – but widespread puzzlement over the details, and the timing. Pulling the measure out of the Comprehensive Spending Review and into the Chancellor's speech made a deliberate statement that the Tories are prepared to punish their core voters, too. For that reason, some have called this George Osborne's 10p tax moment – and while they might be exaggerating, there are certainly a lot of disgruntled people out there.